Immigrant adolescents in Catalonia and the construction of cultural identity: life stories and inclusion processes

This paper describes a research project on immigrant adolescents in Catalonia and the construction of their cultural identity through life stories and inclusion processes. The results help understand the identity of these adolescents from a dynamic and complex perspective, which involves the interaction of several elements (ethnic issues, gender, social class). As young citizens who have recently arrived in a new society, they still retain strong aspects of identity with their place of origin, and automatically transfer the values and the expectations learnt in the place of origin to their new context. However, it is necessary to speak more about identification than identities, as well as the processes of identity reconstruction in relation to the new social context.